Today was a somewhat amazing day. It was honestly just one of those living the dream days, which wasn't at all how I expected it to go. I decided to axe the swim this morning, made the call last night because I realized that I needed that time to finish up with studying for my histo quiz (that MD has got to be the priority) so I opted out of that morning swim. The quiz went well, I was productive most of the day, I had a great standardized patient session in the afternoon that went way long but was totally worth it and an amazing experience. (We were taking psychosocial histories, which includes the sexual history, and having practice with that kind of history taking is so key.) Then I came home and took my afternoon run in pretty brutal weather (-4C, 16 mph winds, snow) and came out the other side unscathed and extremely proud of myself. It was a simple day, but it was a simple day that I'm really happy about. Here's the update!
Today's Workout: Base run, 7 miles, clockwise loop of Forest Park
Summary: 7.24 mi, 1:09:58, 9:40 pace
Pace splits by mile: 9:32, 9:55, 9:53, 9:58, 9:23, 9:33, 9:43, 8:28
Hit Rate: 41/43 (95.3%)
Notes/thoughts:
- I wanna talk about the hit rate first, but in order to do that I have to explain something else: I'm going to a dual meet (WUSTL vs SLU) on Sunday which I found out about today via a tri team teammate and although I have yet to receive official confirmation that I can race (the race is with the newly formed swim club, of which I'm not officially a part of), I'm rolling off the assumption that I can. That, in conjunction with missing the morning swim today, led to some changes in my schedule for the week. The end result of which is that instead of going double-double-single for Monday through Wednesday, I'm now going single-double-double and I'm technically not doing any fewer workouts than I was originally planning on, the days just sort of got shifted a bit...
- So what's up with the hit rate? Well it's technically supposed to reflect the amount I actually train compared to the amount I had planned on/wanted to train when I was first building my schedule. I think in this situation I should probably not be docking myself anything for the missed swim this morning because in reality it was just sort of shifted a day, but I also feel like the hit rate was starting to climb and it actually made me feel really pressured to stay close to perfect (ah yes, those perfectionism tendencies kicking in) and that was a bit stressful. Weirdly enough, I want to reinforce right now that it's okay to do things like decide to drop a workout because my education depends on it. Normally I think I would see that mark against the hit rate as punishment or something, but today it's more like, "oh yeah, I dropped a workout and that percentage went down a bit but it's still above 90% and I'm doing a fantastic job"! It's actually really reassuring. So that's why I ended up taking the point off. I know it's sort of convoluted and weird, but it makes sense to me right now so I'm rolling with it.
- There were other people running outside today. People who were probably much more accustomed to the cold and way more badass than me, but it made me feel so good to see other people out there too. It all goes back to normalizing the workload. I didn't feel like the weirdo who chose to spend a really cold day outside running for an hour. I felt like just another person out amongst similar people doing something that I love and trying to achieve a goal.
- On the other hand, there were also a lot of fast people out today, and one of the things that I kept thinking to myself was that this is how I'm going to become one of them one day, this is how I'm going to get to where I want to go. By being willing to be outside and working on cold days when it would be easier to stay in and skip. I don't often like to pat myself on the back for doing things because that's sort of like me spoiling myself and I don't want to become spoiled and bratty when it comes to my attitude about training, but today I definitely did acknowledge that I was doing something that not everyone would be willing to do and that I should be proud of myself for it.
- Actual run facts: I wanted to stay under 10:00 pace the entire run today, which I did. Figured it was about time to pick things back up to a reasonable-ish easy run speed. It felt harder than a normal 9:40 pace day would've felt, more steady state than actually easy, but that's okay, it'll take a bit of time to get back to where I want to be. The cadence was super solid. Henry's last text to me before my run was to watch my cadence, which was actually a great reminder because I did keep it in mind the entire run and hit a 175 spm average overall. Moving in the right direction! Also longest run since the IT band first flared up!
I have a lot more schoolwork that I need to worry about now, so I will get right back on that and hopefully be able to go to bed at a reasonable hour so I can hit the pool tomorrow morning! I took a chunk of my finger off this morning while washing a chipped bowl and it was bleeding pretty profusely and is now just one big open wound on my hand, so we'll see how that handles the chlorine...On the upside, I have a ride! So I won't need to bike out in the very cold. Yay! Happy Monday!
Much love,
Jess
